Category Archives: Marketing Automation

Bob is the newly appointed chief marketing officer at an upcoming B2B enterprise. Just promoted, Bob is all fired up to take his company to the next level.

As the first step toward his goal, Bob decides to switch his company’s current lead generation software with one that lets him collect more data and passes it along to his marketing tool suite.

To find a suitable tool, he does a Google search and looks up for the “best lead generation software”… browses through the top results … and BAM lands on our very own site.

Now you’re probably wondering about Bob’s second step … so, what does Bob DO next?

Does he signup right away?

No.

Does he book a demo?

Nope.

Ok – does he at least write us a query?

*Nada!*

Instead, he signups up to download our free guide with lead generation tips. So, all we have from Bob is his email.

Do you think it would make sense if we just emailed Bob a Digioh pitch and asked him to sign up?

You’re right – it would feel a bit early to make the offer.

But, since we know Bob’s interested, we could invite him to signup for our webinar series on lead generation. And after Bob attends it, we would be sure that Bob is engaged and is also aware of Digioh’s capabilities. So, this would be a good time to invite Bob for a personalized demo. Following this demo could come a personalized offer. And then maybe Bob would become a customer.

As you just saw, the buying cycle got pretty lengthy. Also, quite a few interactions happened before the actual sale.

To catch up with such buying journeys that comprise multiple interactions and touchpoints, and to make sure that the right person gets the right message at the the right time, businesses use “MARKETING AUTOMATION”. Automating marketing efforts lets organizations set up rules that trigger pre-defined responses from the business that get the prospects to interact, engage, and buy.

For example, in our case, a rule like “Organic traffic + interested in lead generation content” could trigger the action of sending the invite to the lead generation webinar. Further, participation in all the webinars could lead to the demo invite.

Hopefully, the above example has given you an idea of what marketing automation is all about. Let’s now look at how marketing automation tools define this term.

A primer on marketing automation

If you look up for the definition of “marketing automation”, you’ll find that every marketing automation software has one of its own.

For example, here’s one from Pardot (from Salesforce):

Marketing automation is a software platform that helps you to automate your marketing and sales engagement to generate more leads, close more deals, and better measure marketing success.

This one comes from HubSpot:

Marketing automation refers to the software that exists with the goal of automating marketing actions. Many marketing departments have to automate repetitive tasks such as emails, social media, and other website actions. The technology of marketing automation makes these tasks easier.

If you can’t understand much from these definitions … watch this video by Eloqua, another marketing automation solution. It gives the simplest explanation of marketing automation and comes straight from a marketer.

(Click on the image below to watch the video.)

Marketing automation is a lot more than setting up “Autoresponders”

Some people get confused between marketing automation and sending automated email campaigns (via autoresponders). These two are very different concepts.

Let me explain:

Someone who runs a popular blog and just needs to send out monthly newsletters and welcome series to new subscribers doesn’t need an automation solution. A good email marketing tool should suffice.

But for someone who’s selling an expensive B2B product with the average buyer’s journey spanning across various channels and touchpoints, a marketing automation solution is the answer to most of the marketing challenges.

And you CAN’T, in fact, compare marketing automation software like ExactTarget with email marketing software like the following:

The most that an email marketing software can enable you to do is setup emails that go on specific times. That’s it. It’s only when they’re powered by an automation solution that they can send personalized and targeted offers. If you too have a complex product on offer, you will likely need to invest in an automation tool.

So that brings us to ExactTarget, the leading marketing automation tool.

Well, ExactTarget was an email marketing automation software that Salesforce acquired and rebranded as the Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud. Later, in 2014, Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud got rebranded as “Salesforce Marketing Cloud” (dropping the term ExactTarget from the name).

So … ExactTarget — as we know now — is Salesforce Marketing Cloud. It continues to be one of the most popular marketing automation solutions for small to large businesses.

It monitors and analyzes a prospect’s touchpoints with a business across different marketing channels. It also helps companies map their customer journeys, discover patterns, and draw insights.

If you’re considering ExactTarget for your business, you should find the following cheat sheet helpful. It gives links to detailed comparisons between ExactTarget and its popular alternatives.

Before you read the comparisons, you should know that comparing two marketing automation solutions is tricky. While all of them work as the linchpin in an organization’s marketing efforts, each one works differently.

ExactTarget vs Act-On

Act-on’s automation capabilities help business with brand awareness and demand generation. They also assist with client retention. They’re the “Marketing Platform for the entire Lead-to-Revenue Lifecycle.”

ClickDimensions lets you automate campaigns by defining triggers, timers, and actions. It helps organizations identify the people who’re interested in their services and helps them take informed decisions to pull these people into the sales funnel.

Conclusion

Choosing a marketing automation software is one of the most critical business decisions you’ll ever take. And there’s no dearth of options to consider. Your choice, however, will depend on the features/functionality that you need the most, the marketing problems you’re facing, and the kind of returns that you’re expecting out of your investment.

So, what is your biggest criteria for choosing a marketing automation solution?

P.S Oh and if you do go for ExactTarget (or even for any of its alternatives for that matter), you should check out Digioh as well. Powering your marketing automation efforts with Digioh’s super lead generation capabilities can tool you up for the ultimate marketing automation success.

Here’s how it works:

First comes Digioh that collects leads (or emails) for you.

Next, these leads get passed along to your marketing automation software. Thanks to Digioh, your marketing automation tool has all the info about the lead’s source (i.e., how it landed on your list), what content the lead finds interesting (from the segment the lead got added to), and much more. (These are the ingredients of the perfect, most converting automation workflows.)

Book a Digioh demo now and see how you can spruce up your marketing automation game with Digioh’s lead generation awesomeness.

Marketing automation refers to a set of software, and marketing tactics designed to present highly targeted info to your prospects. Think about the last time you bought something from everyone’s favorite mega retailer Amazon. When you first went to their homepage, they probably showed you some products they thought you’d like. Once you added something to your cart, they probably suggested that you also add something from your wishlist. For the most part, their suggestions are usually pretty good, making them a great example of marketing automation.

Why should you use marketing automation?

Properly-executed marketing automation helps you to send the right message to the right person. To put it another way, you’re showing each person content they’re interested in rather than expecting them to sift through everything you have to offer to find what they want.

In order for this to work, you have to be able to identify your visitors, and their needs. If you don’t do that effectively, your marketing automation efforts will backfire. Think about the credit card offers that show up in your mailbox. You probably don’t even open most of them, and that’s because you can usually say with some level of certainty that the offer in that envelope isn’t going to meet your needs.

The companies sending out those offers do so indiscriminately. They’re sending offers to every address they can get a hold of in hopes of getting a positive response. As a result, the majority of people who receive these offers don’t pay any attention to them.

Digioh can help!

Digioh is here to help you implement a successful marketing automation strategy. Our Lightbox helps you to segment your visitors before they even enter your marketing funnel. Our lightbox can identify a visitor’s IP, their geographic location, the referrer they came in from, which page they’re viewing on your site, and the device they’re viewing your site from, and it can show your visitors specific messages based on all of those factors. In other words, you can craft a highly targeted message to show to very specific groups of your visitors.

The lightbox can also be used to collect info from your visitors. That info can be sent straight to any email marketing service like Mailchimp, Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget and Pardot), Constant Contact, or it can be imported to any CRM like Pipedrive and Salesforce CRM. There is a lot of Marketing Automation software and Digioh is integrated with over 400+ email marketing and CRM software companies, so you’ll never have to manually enter your visitors’ data into another marketing tool!

We also offer detailed analytics data so you can get a clear picture of who your best leads are, and where they’re coming from. That way you can adjust your marketing strategy to accommodate your best customers, or to bolster support for segments of your audience that need it!

All of these features make it easy to use the Digioh Lightbox as part of your marketing automation strategy.

You have to see it to believe it – click here to reserve an appointment for a demo today!